The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) Read online

  Walsh didn’t need to hear the words to know what was happening, but they assaulted him anyway.

  “…you killed him!” Amy screamed. “You always wanted this farm for yourself. You and your boyfriend. Your little fuckbuddy! You killed my dad. You killed him!”

  Oh hell no. This wasn’t going to go on. His farm, his woman.

  His woman?

  Walsh gave his shrillest, loudest whistle, and all heads came his direction. “Oi, cut the shit, the lot of you,” he said. He didn’t demand explanations, because he didn’t want them. “All of you” – he gestured to the Richards – “get the hell off my property ‘fore I have you arrested.”

  Wouldn’t Fielding love that? An outlaw calling the cops.

  Amy rounded on him. “You!” she screamed. Mascara and snot poured down her face. “You and that stupid little bitch killed my dad!”

  Her son stepped around her, bowed up with aggression. “Fuck you!” he yelled. A vein leapt in his forehead. “Foreign prick, fuck you, I’ll kill you!”

  “That’s original.”

  “Walsh,” Emmie said, and his heart grabbed, the way she looked at him like she was worried about him, the withheld tears.

  Walsh refocused, trained his gaze on Brett Richards and his bloodshot eyes. Drug user, he thought. Hmm…and Richards was killed with H? Wonder where that came from.

  “Kill me,” he said calmly, “and you’ll have an army of men on top of you. This ain’t a bar parking lot fight, mate. Recognize that you’ve lost, and move on. Yeah?”

  Brett lunged forward, but Manny caught him, whispered something in his ear, frowning harshly.

  “Yes,” Walsh continued, “if you could all just leave, that’d be brilliant.”

  There was a lot of mumbling, fussing, and arguing, but en masse, the group headed toward their vehicles.

  “This isn’t over,” Manny said ominously. He thought it was ominous anyway.

  Walsh didn’t react, waiting stone-faced until all their vehicles had headed down the driveway.

  His three employees sagged with obvious relief.

  “Oh my God,” Becca said. “Those assholes think Em killed Mr. Richards. I mean, seriously.” She snorted. “If anybody did, it was Brett.”

  Emmie turned toward her working student like she meant to chastise her, but didn’t follow through. She swallowed hard, eyes still glimmering.

  “Fred,” Walsh said, “are the horses all put away for the evening?”

  “Sí.”

  “And the lessons all over?”

  “Sí, Señor.”

  “Good. I’ll you see you tomorrow.”

  And then his eyes were only for Emmie as he stepped toward her. “Come on, love,” he said quietly, sliding an arm across her shoulders. “Ignore it. Just put it out of your head.”

  ~*~

  Easier said than done. Emmie put the wineglass to her lips, saluted her drunken father in her head, and drank deep.

  “Why the hell’d you drink gin last night when you had a decent white up here?” Walsh asked, filling his own glass.

  “’Cause liquor is quicker,” she said, shaking her head. “And because I’m doomed to my DNA,” she muttered.

  He cocked his head, staring at her in that penetrating way that left her frightened and turned on at the same time. “You think that?”

  “You don’t?”

  He made a considering face. “If I did, I’d have about nine kids by now.”

  “You’re one of nine?”

  “Half-brothers and sisters, all.”

  “Ah.” She felt a quick stab of sympathy for him. “I always thought being an only child was the worst. Maybe it’s not?”

  “Definitely not.” He set the wine down on the small café table between them with a soft thump. “They aren’t all bad. Some I get on with. But knowing my father’s a useless piece of shit? Not the best feeling.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  The wine went down her throat with a crisp kick and a warm afterburn in her stomach. Worlds better than gin, but it left her soft and sensitive. Gin could dull the pain, but wine could make it worse, if she let it.

  Walsh had lingered down at the barn after the Richards mess was swept out onto the road, undeterred by Fred and Becca’s questioning looks and raised eyebrows. Emmie had known where the night would end up, and wasn’t going to fight it. When they were alone, she’d said, “Come on up,” and here they were in her loft, the smell of frozen pizza beginning to waft over from the oven.

  “It’s nice,” he’d told her.

  “You’ve seen it before,” she’d said, and he’d ducked his head in acknowledgement.

  “You know these assholes better than I do,” he said, slumping down against the back of the chair. “How far are they gonna take things?”

  “They’re mostly talk. The kids anyway. Davis was the bulldog. None of those five have ever had to take care of anyone or anything, so chances are slim they’ll push much further.”

  “Good. We don’t have to talk about them, then.”

  “Isn’t that what you said last night?” she asked, grin tugging at her lips, warmth tugging even harder in the pit of her stomach.

  His golden brows lifted. “You want to do things differently than we did last night?” A tiny hint of a smirk sent her pulse skyward.

  “Depends on what you mean by differently.”

  The oven timer chose that moment to go off with a loud droning buzz. The last thing she wanted was to get up and walk away from the table – more like crawl across it to get in his lap. But the touch of his eyes on her body made her regret it a little less.

  It hadn’t ever been like this for her, this mutual, mature attraction. The patience in him, the way he could eat and drink with her and talk about things, all the while he was simmering on low, ready to get his hands on her – that turned her on more than anything ever had.

  She cut the pizza and carried the plates back to the table, let him top off her wine. When she was settled, blowing on her slice of pepperoni to cool it, he said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  His face grew serious, the sexual gleam leaving his eyes, replaced with something that looked raw in the low light. “Where will you go,” he said carefully, “when you’re done here?”

  “Um…to the dishwasher, I guess. To put the plates in it.”

  “No, I mean: when you’re done with Briar Hall, when you move on, where then?”

  The question hit her like a fist. “Why would I be done with it?”

  He made a face that said come on. “You’re young, you’re talented – aren’t you trying to get in with some big name trainer? Set up your own barn? Get married?”

  “I…” Her bite of pizza felt lodged in her throat. The anxiety that always accompanied such questions turned her hands clammy, tightened her chest.

  “I’m not saying you ought to do those things, love,” Walsh said. “It’s just, in my experience, good things don’t stick around very long. So I’m wondering if you’ve got plans. If you’re planning on leaving me.” He smiled, but it was false and sad.

  She set her pizza down, heart pounding. “And I better jump on those good things before they go away?”

  His voice grew softer, gentler. “No, pet. You are the good thing.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She lurched to her feet, paced away from the table. When she turned around, Walsh was watching her with that appraising look of his. The words tumbled out of her, lubed up by the wine.

  “I was supposed to go to Florida,” Emmie said. “All the good dressage trainers winter in Florida or California. I was going to go work for an Olympian, ride his horses, get myself a sponsor.” She shook her head, pain prickling her skin at the memory. “I applied to be a working student with four different trainers. Sent resumes, videos. Even rode in person for one of them. You know what they said? They said I didn’t have ‘it.’ I didn’t have the ‘wow factor.’ ‘She’s a good rider,’ they said, but I wasn
’t ever going to be anything ‘special.’ And what the hell does that mean, huh? ‘It’?”

  He shook his head. “No idea.”

  “Amy was my only reference – I’ve ridden here all my life, never worked anywhere else, thinking loyalty would count for something. And you know what? Loyalty isn’t shit, because now Amy hates me, won’t give me a good recommendation, and I wasted my whole life on a family that’s accusing me of killing one of them.” She shut her eyes against the tears and they pressed hard at the lids.

  “Loyalty counts.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She sighed deeply, years’ worth of devotion and incredibly hard work scraping against her lungs. She dropped back into her chair. “And marriage?” She snorted. “Men don’t like me. Men don’t want me.”

  “I do.”

  God, his face, with its intensity and sincerity, the blue of his eyes in the dim light. The tears came back, blurring her vision.

  “You don’t want me to leave, do you?” she whispered. “Because I have nowhere to go. All I have is this farm.”

  “No, love. I’ll never want you to go.”

  Emmie wasn’t aware of moving, knew only that he was suddenly right in front of her, and that she was crouched before him, her hands on his denim-covered thighs. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry–”

  He caught her face in his hands and kissed her, drew her up against him and pulled her astride his lap so he could get better access, crack her jaw wide with his lips and taste the inside of her mouth.

  His hands moved down her neck, her shoulders, until they were on her hips and pulling her in tighter. His tongue flicked against the roof of her mouth the same moment his hips lifted into her.

  Maybe he was lying about wanting her long-term, but he wanted her now; she could feel the evidence against the inside of her thigh. And maybe she shouldn’t have, but she wanted him just as badly.

  His hands slid forward, skimming beneath her shirt across the sensitive bare skin of her belly, finding the button of her shorts and thumbing it open. He teased the zipper down, slid a thumb into the opening, found her clit through her panties with devastating accuracy.

  She tilted her hips forward, seeking his touch, urging him to go further.

  He pulled back from her mouth, pressed a kiss to her jaw, beneath her ear, his stubble prickling at her skin. A low, throaty whisper, right at her earlobe: “Do you ride anything besides horses?”

  She didn’t recognize her own voice, the ache in it. “Yes.”

  She hated that she had to climb off of him and stand to ditch her shorts. But then she was straddling his lap again, knees against the seat of the chair so she’d have leverage, and his hands were sliding up her bare thighs. “I have a magic trick for you: get a condom out of your pocket while you’re sitting down, ‘cause I’m not getting up again,” she teased, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  He grinned and lifted one hand, Trojan packet held between two fingers. “Way ahead of you.”

  Her fingers trembled with anticipation as she unfastened his belt and jeans, took him in-hand and did the honors with the condom.

  It had never been this way with a man before, like that persistent emptiness inside her shifted, so she needed more than a hug, a kind word, those small tokens she limped along with. With Walsh, it became this acute need; she wanted him inside her, wanted the pleasure to be her comfort, her stand-in for love. Wanted him specifically, just him, his hands on her as she sank slowly down, taking him deep, relishing the sense of being filled, loving his sharp indrawn breath as her sex gripped his cock tight.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, and his fingers bit into her hips.

  Emmie flattened her hands on top of his shoulders and lifted, and lowered. Found a rhythm. It was nothing and everything like riding, and her thighs knew the tension to hold, and her muscles were primed for this kind of joining. The tension built in slow, gossamer tides, and she felt like she could have spent hours building it, little by little, sustaining the teases of pleasure without reaching the crest.

  She didn’t want it to be over.

  But apparently, Walsh wasn’t going to let her do all the steering.

  He hooked his hands behind her knees and pulled her legs straight on either side of his hips, so she was sitting on his lap, fully impaled, the penetration impossibly deep, and wholly within his control.

  “Walsh,” she said on a gasp, not sure if it was a question or a plea. She didn’t want it to stop. She wanted –

  “Trust me, love,” he murmured, and eased her upper body back, back, back…until she was lying across the tabletop.

  Completely vulnerable. Stretched out. At his mercy.

  “Walsh,” she said again, and he rolled his hips, lifting into her, the penetration at a new angle. “Oh,” she said, and then she bit down hard on her lip as he moved again.

  His hands glided up beneath her shirt, bundling it, pushing it above her breasts. He unclasped her bra with an efficient move and pushed it up too, so she was naked to his eyes, bent back like a sacrificial offering.

  She was more than ready to play the lamb, especially as his hands closed over her breasts. He shaped them in his palms, teased her nipples to tight buttons.

  She lifted into his touch, shameless and gasping.

  Endless teasing, petting. And when she thought she’d shatter with waiting, he lifted her with two firm hands on her thighs and surged to his feet, driving forward hard with his hips, pinning her down to the table.

  It was a small table, and her head hung off the far side, but she didn’t care. The first real man to come into her life was about to make her come, and it was going to be earth-shattering.

  She clutched at his shoulders as the spasms hit her, wrapped her legs around his waist.

  Mind-blowing was too polite a word.

  And after – after, he was so sweet, and cradled her in his arms, carried her to bed. He stripped naked and climbed in beside her, pulling her in close, tucking her head beneath his chin.

  All her life, Emmie had wondered why women allowed themselves to become entangled with heartbreaking, poisonous men. Law-breakers and chain-smokers.

  Now she knew. As he switched off the lamp and darkness bathed their sweat-damp bodies, she understood completely.

  ~*~

  One second Walsh was deep asleep, dreaming about soft, feminine sounds of pleasure, and the next he was fully awake, staring through the dark, his arm wrapped around a warm, narrow waist.

  “What was that?” Emmie whispered, and he knew she was awake too.

  “Dunno. Sounded like one of the horses maybe.”

  As if on cue, the sound echoed again below them, and it was indeed equine: a short, unhappy snort. Followed by the strike of a hoof against a wooden stall door.

  The covers rustled and Emmie slid away from him, sitting up as a dark shadow against the timber wall. “I better go check.”

  Given Michael and Mercy’s peeping tom complaints, Walsh wasn’t betting on a coincidence. “Not alone you’re not.” His head reeled as he sat up, but he told it to cooperate.

  He fumbled around and managed to pull his jeans on, found his gun in his cut, where he’d left it.

  When Emmie flicked the lights on, he saw that she was wearing his shirt and had tugged on a pair of soft cotton shorts. She pushed her hair back and stepped into her ugly brown clogs. “You don’t have to come,” she insisted.

  “Yeah, I do. And I’m going first.” Belt done up, boots on, gun in hand, that was the best he could do for the moment. “You got a torch?”

  “A – oh, a flashlight, yeah.” She produced one from a kitchen drawer and handed it over. “You’re armed?” Her face compressed and became impossible to read as she stared at the Glock in his right hand.

  “That a problem?”

  “Just unnecessary.”

  “We’ll see.”

  A black stretch of shadow lay at the bottom of her staircase. The moon was up, and pale light lit every window and both wide doors
at either end of the aisle, but the center was blackness, filled with the restless shifting of animals, at least most of which were horses. Walsh had a prickling up the back of his neck that told him at least one human was here, too.

  “Stay behind me,” he whispered.

  She snorted. “Yeah. I’ll do that, Hercules.”

  “I’m serious, Em.”

  There was a scuffle of noise like footsteps on the concrete aisle.

  Walsh clicked on the torch and flashed its beam in a fast arc, his Glock at the ready below it, police-style.

  Nothing.

  But still, his skin crawled like someone was watching him, like maybe someone lurked just out of sight. He was never wrong about that sensation, and so he stood, sweeping the aisle with the light, hand tight on the gun.

  “Good Lord,” Emmie said and ducked around him. “We’re not in a detective movie.” She hit the lights and they came on with a dull hum, flooding the barn with fluorescent glare.

  He winced against the onslaught. “I thought I told you to stay behind me.”

  “I need to make sure the horses are alright.” She paused in her walk down the aisle, turned and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Does this sort of thing happen to you all the time? Does being a Lean Dog inspire a lot of nights like this?” She gestured toward him.

  He lowered the gun and torch. “No,” he lied. “But it’s best not to be an idiot about weird noises in the middle of the night.”

  She gave him a funny look, mouth tucked to one side.

  “Check the horses. I’ll have a look around.”

  She nodded.

  Nothing struck him as out of the ordinary as he circled the barn. He flushed a fox from the shrubs around one of the outbuildings, but otherwise all was still. He walked through the back barn doors and found Emmie standing in front of her horse’s stall, tickling at his chin with her fingertips and saying something low and baby-talkish to him. She filled out his shirt in a completely different way than he did, the chest stretched tight, the shoulders, sleeves, and everything else too baggy for her. She looked tan, fit, young and wholesome, with a little edge of freshly-fucked around the edges.